


Mini: Family Matters and Forgeries

by underwater_owl



Series: aktinovolia et al [3]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Gen, a normal day in the life of a pi, alessandra's fiancee is kickass, oldest con in the books, omar khan is the moral heart of these stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-06 04:12:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15878286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/underwater_owl/pseuds/underwater_owl
Summary: Two short min stories in the time while Juno and Peter are apart.In the first, Juno Steel has a firm policy; no cases involving kids.  No way, no how.  He's not getting involved.In the second, Peter Nureyev allows himself to be convinced of a good deal.





	1. Family Matters

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter contains three small children being in harms' way. The tone is lighthearted and zero people are hurt.

Nureyev boards a flight for some outer rim world called Whittenham on Sunday.

The week is one of those ones that starts out easy enough, but then takes a sharp and sudden turns on the second day and gets _right_ out of hand. Juno is learning to think of that second day window as the high risk period, where problems like this like to leap up out of nowhere and make his life a living hell. He can tell he’s due for it by how quiet Monday turns out to be.

Tuesday morning, he’s already bracing for that second-day-turn when he heads for work. The good news is, it isn’t Nureyev this time raining down chaos. He’s so used to the man causing problems that Juno sometimes likes to forget that his real life is perfectly capable of generating them even without his help.

Rita is hypnotized by a stream, barely mumbles a greeting as he walks in and past her. There are a couple of messages waiting for him on his desk- one to call Sasha back, one from his landlord about the rent again. He opts not to deal with either of those for the second day in a row.

He sits. Leans back in his chair and tries mentally to figure out where Nureyev would be by now, if he departed on time. No, he’s not going to sit here and moon about him. There are lots of other things to think about. Like… how long the job will take. If he’s really going to be back.

Juno breathes out a curse when the communicator beeps and grabs it before Rita can pick up the call from her desk.

“Juno Steel.”

 _“It’s your lucky day,”_ purrs a female voice, and Juno is drawing in a breath to answer when the recording continues, “so why not buy a lottery code? Interstellar Lotteries is…”

He hangs up on the ad call with a groan, and jumps again when the comms chime a second time.

“Boss?” says Rita, down the line, voice audible from the other room, “why are you picking up marketing calls? Is Agent Glass sending you secret codes through the comms system?”

“What? No, Rita, why would he…”

“Only I know he’s a very mysterious man of mystery and all, and if he is I want to know if I should be recording messages from the automated lines. Normally I just ignore them since you’re never-”

“No, Rita, I’m not picking up marketing calls now, that’s fine, it was just a mistake.”

“Because you’re so lovelorn after Mister Glass that your head ain’t screwed on straight any more?”

Juno hangs up his end of the call and looks up in time to see Rita step into the doorway. She continues, without missing a beat;

“Because I thought you looked awfully nice together. A little harrowed by the trials of the ages, but that’s a very good sign this early in a relationship.”

“Oh look,” says Juno, perking up, as the comms chime again, “sorry Rita, gotta take this, might be a client this time, sorry.”

“Boss!”

“Juno Steel.”

Rita starts making a face at him, and an elaborate series of gestures that suggest she _will_ have more questions later on.

“Excuse me sir but are you Juno Steel the private eye?”

The person on the other end of the phone is a child. It’s a little girl, he thinks, maybe eight years old, and she has the _very good_ phone manners of someone who has recently been instructed by an attentive parent.

“Hello,” says Juno, with a sudden seriousness that Rita reads. She slips away, silently, “Yes, you’ve reached the detective agency, how may I help you?”

“I’d like to hire you please,” says the little person on the other end of the line, and Juno feels himself draw in a bracing breath.

This happens. Little kids get hold of the phonebook and call him to find a lost stuffed animal or pet, or to solve the mystery of why daddy won’t take them to Polaris Park _ever_ even though he promised, or in the odd and heartbreaking instance, why creds keep going missing out of their piggy bank.

“What’s the case?”

“It’s a kidnapping.”

For such a dramatic line, it’s delivered rather matter of factly. Juno switches to tactic number two for dealing with children.

“Well, Miss, are your parents there? Could you put one of them on the line? I’d need to speak with them about your case, before I can take it.”

“Oh.” Says the voice, a little wobbly, but rallying bravely. “Could you please consider making an exception, Mister Steel? I can’t reach my parents right now and this is an emergency.”

“Okay,” says Juno, sitting up ever so slightly at the word emergency, “what’s your name?”

“Farah.”

“Okay Farah, well, the good news is that for most emergencies, you don’t need a detective, you can call the police, and they’ll be right there to help you. Is this the kind of thing you think you need to call the police about?”

“I don’t think I can, Mister Steel,” she says, “it’s the police who kidnapped us to begin with.”

Juno jumps out of his chair, slams a hand over the receiver, lunges at the door, and orders;

 _“Rita!_ Trace this call right now. Okay, Farah, where are you right now, and are you safe?”

“I’m in a warehouse, Mister Steel. I’m in an empty office but I don’t know how long I’m going to be alone here. I can’t take the comms with me, it’s attached to the wall. I don’t think they know I’m gone yet but I don’t think I can talk too long.”

“We’re going to find out where you are, Farah, and I’m going to be right there. Is it just you there?”

“No. They’ve got my little brothers here too. But they’re four and two so I’m the only one who can really do very much, sir.”

“Are any of you hurt?” He’s already heading for the door when Rita announces she’s texting him an address.

“No. They just came to school in uniform and told the teachers that it was important we go with them. I don’t think Fouad or James even know anything’s the matter, except I know police don’t just take you to warehouses and tell you to wait.”

No, Juno would guess that they don’t, particularly not in the area where this one is, not going by the address Rita is showing him.

“Okay Farah, I want you to go back to your brothers and stay right with them. Don’t let anyone know you’ve called me, okay? You do exactly what everyone tells you to do, and you just sit tight and wait. I’m going to make sure help gets to you fast.”

He checks his blaster and calls the direct line for the only police officer he trusts to be above reproach and willing to help him even in the face of his potentially crooked colleagues.

What he ends up with is an _extremely_ unhelpful receptionist, who informs him that the chief is in a meeting with the mayor and _no one_ is going to be allowed to speak to him for any kind of emergency whatsoever. Juno settles for ordering the man to make Khan call him back the minute he’s out of there.

Then he does the smart thing, for once in his life.

Alessandra Strong meets him at the corner four blocks away and listens to everything he knows so far. The prospect of what lies ahead of them is still terrifying, but it makes Juno feel a little better to know that he has a highly trained squad of battlefield professionals with him on this one.

“So why does the HCPD come after an eight year old, four year old and a two year old?” Says Alessandra, as they approach the building’s front door. Alessandra is around back, so it’s just them. “What if it’s just some criminals who’ve, I don’t know, stolen police uniforms or something?”

“You’ve lived on Mars long enough to know the answer to that, Strong.”

The first guard is outside, an HCPD kid looking bored, texting on his comms. He goes down with a single punch, and Juno hangs behind a minute to handcuff him so they don’t get an ugly surprise coming from behind. Then they sweep deeper into the building.

Around the next corner is the relief shift, and Alessandra drops her with a stunbolt, while Juno scrambles to follow. The command centre that Farah called them from is just on the left, and sure enough, when Strong kicks the door in, a group of men jump to their feet and reach for pistols. Farah said seven and here’s numbers three through six.

“Don’t move!” Yells one, levelling a blaster right at Strong, who raises her hands peaceably. Juno takes one out with a quick shot, and the other two are clipped from behind.

Gillian, aka _the fiancée_ steps out from behind a pillar, and gives Alessandra the most easy, besotted smile Juno has ever seen in the middle of a firefight.

“Okay kids,” he says, “no time for a warm reunion. We’ve got one police officer and three kids to track down.”

“You didn’t find anyone else on your way in the back?” Asks Alessandra, hopefully, and Gillian shakes her head.

“No, but there’s not too much more of this place left to search. All the offices are clear, that just leaves the packing floor.”

The warehouse is empty. Their footsteps echo as they step inside, sound only vaguely muffled by the pulses of noise coming from a few air vents. It’s not empty, though; they find exactly one HCPD officer, hogtied on his belly using an extension cord. Unfortunately there are exactly zero children.

“Huh,” says Juno, “do you think they’ve made a break for it?”

“Or been moved out from under us by someone else,” says Alessandra, grimly, “I think you should stay here, and we should sweep the building.”

“Okay,” says Juno, and takes his blaster out, feeling his heart constrict. This is another good reason that he doesn’t take cases with kids. The thought that they’ve been grabbed by some _third_ party, not the corrupt part of the HCPD. “There’s a good chance they were being picked up _for_ someone, maybe that guy decided they didn’t feel like paying up. In which case-”

“Hi,” says Farah, popping her head out of an air vent above them, giving the two highly trained, extremely jumpy soldiers in the room a pair of hers & hers heart attacks, “Detective Steel, is it okay if I pass you down the baby?”

The minute he sees her face Juno knows _exactly_ what’s going on here and who exactly Farah is. He lets out a desperate little groan, and holds his hands up to help the trio of them down.

\---

Miraculously, Khan doesn’t actually kill him.

This is probably because Juno makes sure to be waiting outside of his meeting at city hall with the children directly in front of him, quiet and well corralled and plainly all in one piece. Alessandra and her friends keep a careful eye on them from other ends of the hallway, in case anyone gets the bright idea to come back for their slipped quarry.

The chief sees his children first- Farah holding Fouad’s hand firmly, responsibly. Juno holds baby James balanced on his hip and tries to look not at all like he hates kids with every bone in his body.

“Kids. _Juno._ ” Says Khan, with the kind of cheerful casual warmth that does not really mask pending apoplexia. “You’re all supposed to be in school. And don’t you remember the talk we had about not going with strangers, and what I talked about recognizing and avoiding _disaster people,_ Farah?”

“I’m sorry, daddy,” says Farah, while her father gets the baby out of Juno’s arms with an alacrity that suggests he’s serious about his _disaster person_ theory, “only police officers came to school and the teachers said we had to go to them. But when they took us to a warehouse and your receptionist wouldn’t let me talk to you, I called the PI registry.”

Khan’s feet just about go out from under him, and Juno cuts in, quickly;

“But everyone is fine and there isn’t a scratch on anyone, I’ve called already and your wife has picked up the other kids from school herself, they’re all on their way here now.”

“And the officers who did this?”

“Under the watchful eyes of a few ex-military friends of mine. I didn’t want to put them into a cell with your people until you could pick the guards yourself.”

“I’m sorry, daddy,” says Farah, obviously reading the look in her father’s eyes. Her own eyes flood with tears, maybe in belated shock, maybe at the thought that she’s done something wrong. Khan makes a quick noise and draws her to him, letting her hide her face in his side and gathering Fouad in as well.

“I’m going to leave this with you, Khan.” Says Juno, “Except you should probably know that Farah here called me calm as could be and gave me a very detailed report of exactly where she’d been taken and what we’d need to do to rescue her. She saw an opportunity and she hid her little brothers somewhere safe. She’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

“Well,” says Khan, still looking frankly a little bowled over, now with three kids squeezing tight against him, “she’s an incredibly smart, brave, perfect little girl.”

Farah sobs in earnest, and clings tighter to her father.

“I’ll, uh, be in touch. If you need me to testify or anything.” Promises Juno, who is _not tearing up,_ not even a little. He does the noble thing here and runs for it.

Alessandra and Gillian catch up with him in the lobby.

“Omar Khan,” supplies Juno, on the way to the car, “is one of the only decent officers with the HCPD. I don’t know what he was here to meet about today, but I bet it was important. I bet he’s having the kind of day where someone thought it’d be a good idea to be able to blackmail him.”

Gillian shakes her head, rests her hand on the blaster at her hip. She used to be a police officer on Moratuwa, she’d told him in the car (they’d exchanged a few cheery pleasantries about the temple there) and she’s been having a bit of trouble understanding just how and why _actual police_ could be involved.

“Your police here operate like organized crime?”

“Yeah, except where they’re generally not considered competent enough to be called organized.”

“I wonder if he needs a security consultant?” Asks Gillian, giving Alessandra a nudge.

“Or a new, trustworthy person to join his police force,” returns Alessandra, and slides her hand through her fiancée’s. Juno thinks that yeah, he could see this woman being one of the good cops.

“So I’ll send you your hourly rate to your office?”

“Are you charging them?” Alessandra wants to know, and then smiles when Juno shrugs a ‘no.’ “Then don’t worry about it. Just do me a favour and be sure to send me an RSVP.”

“To what?” Juno asks, and Gillian rolls her eyes heavenwards.

“Aren’t you supposed to be a detective?”

Gillian holds out the wedding invitation, unmistakable in the cream coloured envelope with gold lettering.

“Will Rita be your plus one, or should we send a second one to her?” 

Asks Alessandra, as Juno opens the envelope up and pulls out the card. 

“I’ve got a date,” says Juno, absolutely on impulse, “let me just… check with him. But yeah. Congratulations.”

“You too, Juno,” says Alessandra, sounding a little amused at the look on his face, “I really hope you can both come.”

Back in his office, he settles back in at his desk and pours himself a drink. The day is done, the case is over. 

The messages he isn’t going to return are right where he left them. He puts his feet up, sips his whiskey, and pulls the wedding invitation back out again. It’s cream paper, with black ink and delicate embellishments in a blushing peach colour. Juno isn’t sure what that reminds him of _exactly,_ but he pins the card up to the bulletin board on the wall where he’s sure Peter will see it when he gets back.


	2. Fancy Forgeries

“Martha,” says Peter Nureyev, as he settles onto the park bench next to the redhead, “I thought it was going to be just you and I at this little meeting.”

“I know, Mister Crown, I just…”

“I wanted to meet you,” says the man Buddy, ‘Martha,’ has brought with her. He has dark eyes and a nice suit, and Peter gives him a long glance from head to toe. He’s handsome, actually. Young.

Peter gets back up to his feet. Buddy lurches up in alarm, and the slick kid sitting next to her looks away, expression twisting into scorn.

“Mister Crown, Mister Crown, I thought if you just got to know him, if you just met him and saw you liked him. He’s been financing us so far and there haven’t been any problems.”

“Financing us? I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, Martha.”

“I’m not a police officer,” says her companion, shortly, “don’t you recognize me?”

“I’m not _from_ your little backwater planet,” supplies Peter, “if you’re a big fish in this pond I have absolutely no idea.”

Pique makes the young man’s eyes flash. He sits up, and tells Peter;

“Sit. Martha, can you give us a minute?”

Buddy goes, skittering towards the other side of the ornamental pond to smoke and stew. Peter doesn’t sit, staring down at the younger man, lifting an eyebrow at him, _well?_

Out-aristocrated, the young man flushes, and gets to his feet, deciding;

“Why don’t we walk?”

This, Peter permits.

The gardens are beautiful on Whittenham. The planet is dry dusty grasslands, mostly, but this area is kept well-watered, irrigated and lush. There are a few hedges of rosebushes, and Peter leads them towards one of those, allowing Mister Ryan to stew in the silence as they go.

“I’ve been the cash in your little operation,” says Ryan, at last, “and I have been for months now. I haven’t made a sound, I haven’t said a word to anyone.”

“As I was able to infer by the fact that you’re here, hale and whole,” says Peter, arching an eyebrow at him, “so, why am I here?”

“You’re here because it’s time to think a little bigger.” Ryan is gaining steam now. He has his breath back, is in business pitch mode. “Because we’ve been making two hundred creds in a go, five hundred tops- what’s to stop us putting real money down?”

“You’re the reason Martha’s been on me about this.” Says Peter, flatly, making it an observation, and a question. “She must have told you what I told her.”

“Too much attention, too conspicuous, too much investigation into the lottery winners,” echoes the young man, obediently “but I know something you don’t know.”

“I highly doubt that, young man.”

“I’m Roger Ryan. I’m the heir to the Ryan fortune. You _have_ heard of Ryan Technologies, I assume?”

Peter permits himself a pause here, arching a single, delicate eyebrow at him, because yes, everyone has heard of Ryan Technologies. Fewer people know the troubled young heir and his fondness for gambling, of course, but there’s no need for Peter to say _that_ out loud just yet.

“No one will think twice if I put some big money down in the Intergalactic Lottery,” says Ryan, with fervor, “and I’ve run your trick four times now, I _know_ you’ve fixed it, I know you can predict the winning numbers.”

“Keep your voice down,” snaps Peter, and Ryan flushes voice changing to a hiss. “And stop lying to me. You think I really don’t know who you are, Mister Ryan? _Heir_ is a bit of an understatement.”

“I’m the oldest son!” Snaps the young man, flushing violently.

“By the second marriage, in polyamorous Wittenhal tradition. That means everything is deeded to your younger sister, doesn’t it?” The colour the boy turns is frankly alarming. Peter twists the knife just a little more. “I know your reputation very well. I also know that it’s the marriage order that matters here, and not the birth order of the children. I would never let you in on a business relationship this delicate, and I’m alarmed that Martha chose you to begin with, even on such a small scale.”

“So you’re admitting then that there _is_ a bigger version of the scam? Something where if I could get some money together we could make significant returns on it?”

“It would be… possible, to apply the system we’re using for the lottery together to target some of the other virtual gaming tables the company runs,” allows Peter, as though against his own better judgement, “although I have half a mind to stop all together, if _you_ can work it out someone else certainly can.”

“So let me put down some real money. Just once. Forty five thousand credits on a game with a two to one return. I don’t want to keep just buying winning lotto numbers when the pots are this small. We could make a hell of a lot more.”

“No.” Says Peter again, and then lifts his hand to forestall an objection. “No. I don’t know you, and from what I know _of_ you, I don’t trust you. I know Martha, but I also know she’s got a slightly soft heart when it comes to kids like you. I also know that there’s a lot of potential for the system to fall apart, and if that happens, we don’t want to be gambling the kind of money you’re talking about.”

“You wouldn’t be gambling it, though. I’d be gambling it.”

“And in exchange for what?”

“A higher cut. My initial investment back, plus ninety percent of the profits. If the risk is higher and I’m the one bearing that risk, then I want the payout to come to me.”

Peter smiles, sharp and vicious, and then they’re bargaining. Ryan fights hard, with all the determination of a good young scion. Peter battles back viciously, because he needs the eighty three percent they settle on to feel like a hard-won prize.

“I don’t want to go through an intermediary then. And I don’t want to be on Whittenham long, it’s a backwards little planet. I’m staying at the Rosemere Hotel; you can meet me in the bar there tonight.”

Ryan’s eyes flash in triumph, and he offers Peter his hand to shake. He only hesitates a moment before shaking it.

“And If it’s eighty three percent to you, and seventeen percent to me, what does Martha get for connecting you to me?” Wonders Peter, quietly. Ryan’s palm is a little sweaty. “Are you honestly prepared to cut her out of this entirely?”

“Martha’s a nice lady,” says Ryan, in the kind of tone that makes that not a compliment.

Peter returns his smile, with every bit of meanness reflected right back at him.

\---

After the transfer of credits is complete, Peter changes hotels, and meets Buddy in an entirely _separate_ hotel bar. She collects the forty thousand credits from him comfortably (five thousand transferred into one of Peter’s own accounts, for his efforts) and then kisses Peter on the cheek. 

The trap had been thoroughly laid. The boy knows full damn well that there’s a chance a bigger bet could go wrong. He also knows very well that he’s taking a risk. Of course there is no rigged game; just Buddy paying the little nibbling bets up front out of pocket to convince the mark that he’s betting on a sure thing.

When Buddy whisks the whole case off into her ship and manufactures the loss for him he’ll have no one to blame but himself- and if he does get suspicious, what’ll he do? Call the police and tell them he got his money stolen while trying to cheat the lottery?

“You’ve got an exit strategy?” Peter asks, though he’s sure he doesn’t need to. “You know how it is with the rich ones. He’ll take it personally and get creative about it.”

“I get out of the game for a couple of years and you think you can go and give me advice, Johnny?”

“No ma’am,” says Peter, obediently, and submits to a pat on the hand, “just hoping to work with you again soon and hoping there’s a way we can do so.”

“I can’t persuade you to stick around, play my lure on another one or two of these, I don’t suppose?”

“Sorry Buddy, but I’ve got a lady back on Mars now. I’ve already kept him waiting too long.”

This makes Buddy lift her eyebrows. It shouldn’t surprise Peter that she puts it together; he’d recommended Juno as a replacement when he couldn’t get back to Mars in time for her last job, and he’d floated her a good part of the cash to get that cybernetic eye replaced (because really, the work he did was not _nearly_ worth that much of a payment.) Buddy knows his type, anyways, and Juno makes quite an impression.

“You give him a kiss from me and Vespa.”

Peter promises. He’s off Whittenham before the sun rises.

\---

All told, he’s only been gone five days. Initially Juno counts the minutes, but after Farah Khan and her little brothers are returned safely home. Then Alessandra throws him a case after that, one she doesn’t have time to take on herself, and it’s so intricate and engaging that he’s almost late to pick Peter up from the spaceport.

He manages to skid up to arrivals just in time to watch Peter Nureyev come down the gangplank, scanning the crowd casually as he goes. He sees Juno’s face in the crowd and smiles, and Juno knows he’ll never risk being late and missing that moment ever again.

“I thought you were supposed to be gone two weeks,” says Juno, not sure what he’s supposed to do out in public like this, where anyone can see them. His hands twitch an unconscious reach for him, and Peter apparently reads it written all over his face. He smiles to himself and closes the distance between them for a shameless kiss.

“The job went smoothly, and I thought to myself, _why stay away?”_

Juno breathes in deeply, and is struck, as always, by how good Peter smells.

“I missed you,” he says, because he’s made a resolution to be more like the Khans, who had him over for dinner this week. They have terrifying children, but a very sound partnership, “It's good you’re back.”

 _Work on providing overt emotional support and communication_ said the chief. It’s not exactly demonstrative, not by normal standards, but for Juno Steel it’s almost a declaration of love.

It’s going to be an easy habit to pick up, if every time makes Peter kiss him just like he right now. Juno puts his arms up around his neck and ignores the crowd going by.


End file.
